Late-night revellers on their way home stared skyward in amazement as
it hovered just below the low cloud base.

It was
large, very large. For a full 20 minutes its brightness lit up the sky near
the town of Dumfries In southern Scotland. Then it vanished over the hills.

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But before the mysterious flying machine — a “classic” Unidentified Flying Object, according to an
expert — disappeared it was witnessed by five policemen despatched to the
scene after the local police station had been flooded by telephone calls.

And
Dumfries police took the unusual step last night of laying on a news
conference with two of the policemen who saw the UFO.

Sergeant
Bill McDavid, 39, said his first reaction was that It was shaped like an
airship with five or six white lights looking as if they were from different
compartments.

Because
of the darkness he could not see an exact outline but his Impression was of a
cigar shape. He drove to within a mile of it and it was no more than 500 feet
above the ground. "It was certainly larger than an aircraft in the sky,"
he said.

His
colleague. P-c James Smith, said : " I never believed in UFOs up to now.

Amazed

"It was raining at the time and
the cloud base was very low. It remained stationary for about 20
minutes, then vanished over the hill to the west."

The
first reports were made to police just after 1 a.m. by Mary Blyth. 22, and
her sister Vicky, 19.

Mary
said: "The lights appeared from nowhere. We just stood and stared at it in
amazement."

A
spokesman at Glasgow Weather Centre said last night it was not unknown for
bright lights to be reflected in the sky, especially if the cloud base was
low.

But he
added: "If light from the ground is reflected in the sky it is usually
just a yellowish glare. I have never heard of a cluster of coloured light in
the way that has been described. I have no explanation as to what these
people have seen."

NO positive explanation has emerged for a UFO over
Dumfries which was witnessed by, among many others, live baffled police
officers.

Eye-witness
accounts, made even more credible by those of the trained observers, proved
so remarkable that the police called a special news conference within hours of
Saturday's sighting.

The
Ministry of Defence is saying little about its course of action, although
emphasising that most unidentified fying objects turn out to be aircraft,
space Junk, or caused by freak weather conditions.

Professor
Peter Sweet, head of Glasgow University's department of astronomy, said
yesterday: "I hope the investigators treat this seriously. The report
has to be treated with more respect than others because the witnesses include
policemen trained to be objective and very careful about their
observations."

The
RAF's West Drayton, Station in London which collates UFO information for the
Ministry of Defence, has already received a report from the Scottish air
traffic control centre at Prestwick Airport which sent out an aircraft to
investigate — with negative results.

The
report says witnesses include "seven people at Dumfries Royal Infirmary,
five policemen and a cast of thousands."

The
object is described as oblong in shape, white in colour, with three
equally-spaced lights at the front and two at the rear.

Many
witnesses, including residents from Loch-doc council estate, said the large,
brilliantly-lit, object was about 500ft. up, visible for almost an hour, and hovered
or moved slowly.

UFO
sightings, at different times, were also reported at the weekend in
Motherwell in Lanarkshire and the village of Straiton, in Ayrshire.

Air
traffic control, who receive about two UFO reports a month believe the
sighting was a meteorological phenomenon. It is possible that an aircraft,
perhaps military, was In the area at the time.

Three
of the police officers, Sergeant Bill McDavid, Constable Jim Smith and
Policewoman Pamela Brown, all returned to the area for a second look
yesterday.

They
were adamant about what they had seen after checking both in darkness and daylight
the now blank sky. Sergeant McDavid said: “I've never seen a UFO before. I'm
still sceptical, but I know what my eyes saw and I just cannot explain
it."

One possible
explanation is that the UFO may simply have been the lights of a building at
a GPO transmitter mast. The object was roughly in the same direction as the
mast on top of Riddings Hill.

A
spokesman at police headquarters in Dumfries admitted last night, "This
may be the simple explanation."

It has been established that GPO engineers were
working at the transmitter station from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. — and the UFO was
sighted for almost an hour shortly after 1 a.m.

The police also say that the cloud level at times
was below the oblong-shaped building, and the lighting in the station
would have been shining out of the windows.